What percentage of photos are photoshopped?

I'm no pro... but I can say the number of images I photoshop depends on the number of keepers I get... the worst get deleted(no PS) the rest get burned to a cd(no PS) then the ones I like are either resized and emailed(PS) or printed(PS 95-99% of the time) the percentage of keepers that dont get photochopped is pretty low though
--
'Do or do not, there is no try' - Master Yoda

I learned photography with complete access to a full B&W and color photolab. My hero was W. Eugene Smith--who reportedly worked days to perfect his vision onto print paper. I was taught that sweat was an essential additive to Dektol. Oh, and I learned all this in the 60s--when a good portion if not most of photography was still black and white, thus when "post-processing" was still "the name of the game."

So the fact that digital gives me even more control--something I lost somewhat when I had to shift to color for paying work--causes me no "ethical dilemmas." I get to sweat over my images again instead of just "sending them away."

But it seems that there is a younger generation for whom "sendiing them away" was assumed to be as it always has been. So for them, working over an image seems to be unethical.

--
RDKirk
'TANSTAAFL: The only unbreakable rule in photography.'

Check out the following site for a pretty comprehensive list of newspaper photo editing/manipulation guidelines -- interesting reading!

http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=46973&sid=29

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Regards,
Paul
http://www.bangbangphoto.com

Not being the original poster, I definetely think the question is very interesting if you change it just a bit. I 'm convinced that there are differente levels of work you can do to an image in photoshop.

At a very bare minimun, you can distinguish two approches: one that is to do in digital what was always done to film at the lab: levels, contrast, saturation, color shifts, USM, etc. I like to think of this editing tools as the ones that can be applied in batch to a bunch of shot-in-similar-conditions images.

But then, there are other photoshop tools that are applied just in some images and that are particular of that image alone: skin softening, differential USM, b&w convertions (ok, this one is arguable), cloning, background replacement, etc.

So, I think we 'll all agree that every image nowadays is applied some of the "type 1" editing tools, but the question is: how many of your images you treat in a case-by-base, one-by-one, dedicated way?

Talking about tools I try to do all the type 1 editing at the raw conversor (Capture one) and only open photoshop for the rest.

Martin

--
Martin Arpon
(english not my native language)

I think it is arguable whether the guidelines on photo journalists should be so significantly stricter than those on literary journalists (which they are), but they have decided on their own guidelines, so be it.

But journalism is one of the special cases in the overall universe of image art as far as image manipulation is concerned. It does not address the apparent attitude that digital image manipulation--which is not different in character from what photographers always commonly did except for color photography during the period of the late 60s into the mid-90s--is somehow inherently ethically suspect.

St Ansel burned and dodged.

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RDKirk
'TANSTAAFL: The only unbreakable rule in photography.'

in Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada, Lone Pine, California he removed an entire part of the image - a high school student had white washed his school's initials on the side of the mountain. adams hated it and removed that from every print.

"I am not enough of a purist to perpetuate the scar and thereby destroy -- at least for me -- the extraordinary beauty and perfection of the scene," he wrote.

the whole 'anti-photoshop' or anti-manipulation attitude is steeped in naivety. granted, for some photography where accurate replication is critical such as crime scene and some journalism - but for everything else, photography is an art, and art is all about interpretation.

RDKirk said:

I think it is arguable whether the guidelines on photo journalists
should be so significantly stricter than those on literary
journalists (which they are), but they have decided on their own
guidelines, so be it.

But journalism is one of the special cases in the overall universe
of image art as far as image manipulation is concerned. It does
not address the apparent attitude that digital image
manipulation--which is not different in character from what
photographers always commonly did except for color photography
during the period of the late 60s into the mid-90s--is somehow
inherently ethically suspect.

St Ansel burned and dodged.

--
RDKirk
'TANSTAAFL: The only unbreakable rule in photography.'

Click to expand...

--
Jim Fuglestad
http://www.fuglestadphotography.com
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/galleries
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/366

• You're not in third grade anymore. Take as many recesses as you want!
• Why simply live and let live? Live and help live.

--
Anders

http://www.teamexcalibur.se
http://www.teamexcalibur.se/excalibursida4.html
http://www.teamexcalibur.se/excalibursida4a.html

event photography and photo journalism

100%. Though sometimes I shoot jpegs in which case I set in camera the same basic moves I'd have to do later in a RAW converter or photoshop (contrast, sharpness, saturation....).

As many posters have noted, every single digital image must get processed if you want to view it.

Over at Luminous-Landscape, one opinion compared the art of photography to the painting. The painter starts with a blank canvas and decides what of the scene to place on it. The photographer starts with a "filled" canvas and decides what to leave out.

But otherwise, they are the same as far as artistic vision is concerned. Considering the health of those days, I suspect Mona Lisa had cowpox scars and all sorts of skin problems.

--
RDKirk
'TANSTAAFL: The only unbreakable rule in photography.'

I shoot no sharpening and lowest contrast setting possible on every single shot. So every single shot gets capture and output sharpening and usually a creative sharpening pass.

After that it is a shot by shot decision.
--
Ed C.

Yesterday I was working with a design studio team, and one of them said he thinks almost every commercial photo today (broichures, ads, web site, catalogs, etc. ) has fairly serious Photoshopping.

And almost every shot he works with as a designer gets some sort of sharpening, but it barie widely from picture to picture.

I count doing the same things with Photoshiop I'd do with an enlarger and color balance filtrs and dodging with my fingrs as not really photoshop.

I do mostly editorial or quasi editorial work, and very little fancy Photoshop.

BAK

no text

BCC beat me to it!

What % if film is processed using chemicals, and then dodged, burned, and otherwise manipulated during traditional processing?

Whether it is done in a film darkroom or digitally on a computer, it's all a part of the photographic process.

There is not, and most likely, never will be, a camera that produces photos that don't benefit by post processing of some sort.

Which leads to the mystery of why the original poster asks such a question.